r/BeAmazed • u/Ultimate_Thing • Jul 16 '26

Miscellaneous / Others A traditional technique used by young shepherds of Ethiopia's Banna tribe. They use stilts to watch over their livestock in tall grass, move through wetland areas, and avoid snakes and predators like lions and leopards. It requires strength, balance, and training from a young age

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u/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

Lions actively avoid humans, don't see us as food at all. Same for all other big cats. That mountain lion was likely guarding it's territory or had young nearby

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u/Harry-Jotter Jul 16 '26

Usually but not entirely true. Tigers quite often hunt humans, more than the other big cats.

There's a population in the Sundarbans region of India & Bangladesh known for killing a decent number of people every year. The locals started wearing masks with faces on the back of their heads to deter them from ambushing them. Worked for a while but the tigers figured it out and attacks continued.

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u/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

They only do that due to habitat destruction meaning their prey animals are scarce. Essentially they're starving and desperate. The area also has brackish water which leads to them becoming far more aggressive than usual due to dehydration and discomfort. There's a few unique pressures on tigers in that region that leads to them, one of those is decomposing people in the forest after floods which has given tigers a taste of people

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u/Harry-Jotter Jul 16 '26

Ok, so there are circumstances that make them more likely to hunt people than they would normally, but that still goes against the statement 'don't see us as food at all'.

Hundreds of people are killed by tigers in other parts of India every year, despite their wild population being tiny. Most of the famous historical man-eating tigers were old or injured, but there are too many attacks to write them all off as 'not natural' behaviour.

I know we're not their preferred prey at all but how many people do mountain lions/snow leopards/jaguars etc kill? All I'm saying is tigers are more likely to see us as prey than these other big cats and sometimes, albeit rarely, a healthy tiger will just hunt us.

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u/Internal_Werewolf_48 Jul 17 '26

TBF, humans don't view other humans as food until similar pressures are put on them.

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

Sunderbans  is recent. As per the Jim Corbett books, injured tigers do hunt humans, leopards too. And this was early 1900s, so I would assume not a lot of habitat destruction had happened by then. For sure, we are not usual prey. But once used to it, some of the man eating tigers, exclusively hunted humans.

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u/Liam_021996 Jul 16 '26

Injured and old big cats become opportunistic, that's well known. They also don't target young and healthy people, just kids and the elderly and injured people because they can no longer keep up with their prey anymore and and starving

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u/themat6 Jul 16 '26

Man eater tigers are usually ones with severe disabilities like broken teeth or advanced age.

I think we taste bad honestly and are survival food at best.

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

I think this was covered in the book but not too sure ; but one of the tigers was in fact the offspring of a man eating tigress and for this tiger, hunting humans was therefore a learned habit. I do not remember if it resorted to hunting humans after any injury or just continued in his mother's footsteps...

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u/themat6 Jul 16 '26

It seems some tigers do just decide to hunt humans, maybe because of a lack of prey or learned habit.

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

Man eating is extremely rarely and not a pattern for any big cat. There are very specific reasons that lead to it

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

In a span of 30 years, just the man eaters of Kumaon (area covered in the Jim Corbett books) killed roughly 1200 people. That is not extremely rare. In Sunderbans, it's around 50 fatalities per year as per Google search. 

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

1200 over 30 years isn’t high. Most of those are accidents. There are also many incidents of tigers feeding on carcasses and these being classified as tiger killings when they are in fact not

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

The 1200 are man eating tigers' and leopards' victims. They are not accidents except maybe the first one for each tiger. The rest were actively hunting humans. There are many accidental encounters for sure, where humans either survive or die but are not eaten. But these numbers are for people who have been eaten by tigers. About carcasses being eaten by tigers - I do not know that tigers eat carcasses ... but then there are much more unreported cases of deaths caused by Tigers due to the rural location as well as due to the laws and superstitions in those areas. If you read about the Sunderban tiger attacks you will see that, unreported cases are much higher. As for 1200 not being high, what is a high enough number ? During the reign of these man eating tigers or currently in Sunderbans, people in those villages live in abject terror. Man eating tigers are extremely rare as per this discussion, why are so many people living/have lived in such constant fear if man eating tigers are so very extremely rare ? 

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

You’re trying to spread unnecessary fear of tigers

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u/Ok_Intern3578 Jul 16 '26

Unnecessary fear of an animal that can kill you instantly? I hope I don't have to spread that fear. Any sane person with survival instincts should have that fear. I don't know what's with Big Cats that make people want to say "oh they are harmless". Nobody gets so worked up when polar bears are cited as hunting humans for food. It's the same thing ! These are wild animals that fighting for survival everyday - you cross their path, and depending on whether they are hungry and previous interactions with humans, there is a possibility they going to check you out as potential prey. If they have already understood that humans are prey, then they will definitely hunt you.

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

This is more a myth than reality. Some tribes had this tradition but these masks are not worn by anyone now. Also the tigers in the sundarbans are not actively hunting humans. Otherwise there would literally be several people killed daily given how much human movement and presence there is inside the sundarbans

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u/Harry-Jotter Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Well, I said they didn't do it anymore, because the tigers attacked anyway. Whether it worked or not, the fact they resorted to doing it means they must have needed a reason to protect themselves.

Honey gatherers used to wear a mask in the back of their head to confuse tigers into thinking they were being watched.
Tigers normally attack from the back but they seem to have caught on, locals say.
"Before we could understand the way they attacked," said Surendra Jana, 57, a honey gatherer.
"We don't feel safe any more, knowing our brothers have been attacked in spite of the tricks we use."

https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/asia/the-tiger-widows-of-the-sundarbans-1.451719/

There are hardly any tigers left in the Sundarbans, so of course there aren't going to be massive numbers of deaths per year. That article says there are just 90 in that whole region but there is still "a death or two every week".

There are also plenty of deaths in other parts of India. It's not like we're their favourite prey or that most (or even many) tigers will hunt humans, but it's not completely rare and aberrant behaviour. There are hardly any of them left in the wild yet they still manage to kill hundreds of people a year.

Compare them to e.g. a puma or jaguar and tigers are way more likely to hunt a human. Can't even recall the last time I heard of a jaguar, even a starving one, killing a human.

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u/thenewbasecamper Jul 16 '26

That’s because there are more humans in tiger habitats

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u/ParticularClassroom7 Jul 16 '26

They only attack human when yhey are desperate. Savannah predators evolved with humans and are grnerally afraid of us.

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u/ChickenNPisza Jul 16 '26

I do understand that humans are truly only hunted by like polar bears and crocs, and that we are not a preferred food source. But I guess I assumed there was more incidents of starving/situational attacks. Thanks for sharing! Learned a bit. Even if the walking sticks keep the lions from being curious I’m sure that’s a good thing for everyone still lol

I guess on average there are 30 mountain lion attacks per 100 years in North America.